


The alien and his human

by Qwerty1



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Lilo & Stitch (2002)
Genre: Angst, Basically a dw version of lilo and stitch, F/M, Fluff, Some sadness, but happy ending, cuteness, what have I done?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-10-29 21:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10862835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qwerty1/pseuds/Qwerty1
Summary: A spaceship crashes. Nothing unusual, at least not in Rose Tyler's point of view. What is unusual, however, is the alien they find inside the spaceship: a small, fluffy thing with blue fur and a big personality. His spiecies is completely unknown, which means most people would assume he's dangerous.Still, he might just be what Rose needs to help put her life back together.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, I decided to watch Lilo and Stitch while having a cold. The fanfic-part of my brain analysed the plot, and this baby was born! It's just a little mini-series, I guess. Enjoy!

After having spent almost an entire year alone - okay, she’s with her family and that’s at least something - in the parallel world without any hope of ever returning to her original one, one of the few things keeping Rose from having a complete breakdown is her work at Torchwood. She deals with aliens and extraterrestrial stuff. She helps people. That’s more than she could ever dream of doing. Back when she worked in a shop, anyway. 

Being one of the agents with the highest ranking, she really isn’t suprised when she gets a call from work a few hours before midnight. She’s just gone to bed when her phone rings. She rolls over and grabs it, groaning. 

They’ve found a crashed spaceship. Not that they need her for a spaceship, they need her to help them with what they found inside the spaceship. 

 

They keep it locked inside a small room with a big glass window: a small, fluffy alien with blue fur and long bunny-like ears. 

“Well, what is it?” Mickey asks.   
“How should I know?”  
“You’ve encountered several aliens, Rose.”  
“Yeah, but...”

Rose walks closer to the window, studying the alien. It seems to be sniffing its way around the room. She smiles.   
“He’s kind of cute, honestly. Like a puppy.”  
“Yeah, a blue puppy. He?”  
“No idea, just guessing. Where is he from, anyway?”  
“That’s the thing, we don’t know. His DNA doesn’t match any specie or planet in our computer system.”  
“He doesn’t belong here...”  
“You could say that, yeah.”  
“...Just like me...”  
“What?”

Reaching out, Rose presses her palm against the glass. The alien looks up at her. His eyes are big and he is actually pretty adorable. If it wasn’t for the blueness of his fur and the kind of odd shape of his body, Rose is sure she would’ve mistaken him for an actual dog. 

“Stitch. I’m gonna call him Stitch”, she decides, not really knowing where she got the name from.   
Mickey gives her one of the oddest looks she’s ever seen.  
“I accept the fact that you call him cute, but now you’re naming him… Why?”  
“Cause I’m gonna keep him”, she announces.   
“What!? No! Rose, seriously! No!”  
“Why not?”  
“Cause… Cause… Well, look at him! We don’t even know what planet he’s from. He could be dangerous!”  
Rose laughs softly.  
“Dangerous? Look at him! He couldn’t even hurt a fly!”  
“If you say so...”

 

“Absolutely not!”  
“But dad-!”  
“Rose, do you think your mother would ever forgive me if anything happened to you? If that thing hurt you? Cause I don’t think she ever would.”  
“Stitch is not a thing”, Rose mumbles, defending her newfound friend. 

Pete turns around so he’s looking out the window, a long sigh escaping his lips.   
“No, of course not. I just... You’ve spent several hours of the last few days outside that room, looking at him. And… I just don’t see why you’re so fascinated in him. And I certainly do not understand why you want to bring him home with you.”  
Rose looks down at her hands.   
“He’s alone. We don’t know where he’s from, and you can’t send someone back home if you don’t know where they’re from.”  
He nods.   
“You want to help him”, he says quietly.   
“I want to help him”, Rose confirms.

A few signed papers and arguments later, Rose is able to take Stitch home. She has a bit of a struggle getting him to trust her enough to get into her car, but she soon figures out he’ll do almost anything to get a bite of the half eaten chocolate bar in her pocket. Even get in her car and sit still the entire ride home. 

 

Rose really has no idea what Jackie is going to say when she’s introduced to her daughter’s new pet. Bracing herself, she looks over at Stitch. He’s sitting by her feet, happily chewing on what’s left of the chocolate.   
“Alright you, now be nice. I don’t want you freaking out my mum. Or my brother. You need to make a good first impression, alright?”  
His ears twitches and he looks up.   
“You can’t understand what I’m saying, can you?”  
As if to prove a point, he grabs the chocolate in his paw and offers it to her. Despite her effort to stay serious, Rose smiles.   
“No thanks, you can have it.”

Stitch makes a happy little noise, stuffing the entire piece of chocolate into his mouth. Shaking her head with a little sigh, Rose unlocks and opens the front door. It’s best to just get it over with.


	2. Chapter 2

“Rose, sweetheart? Is that you?” Jackie’s voice calls from the kitchen.   
“Yeah!” Rose calls back, shutting the front door behind her.   
Stitch is already sniffing his way around the hallway. He’s found the hallway mirror, which he’s now slowly approaching. Rose watches him as he puts his paw against the mirror glass, jumping back as his reflection does the same. Rose laughs softly at the cuteness of it all, before walking over and picking him up. He makes a little noise of displeasure, but he doesn’t really struggle as Rose carries him into the kitchen. 

“There you are, sweetheart. How was wo-”  
Jackie stops talking in the middle of the sentence, her mouth actually hanging open as she stares at Stitch. The fluffy alien is hanging from Rose’s arms like a big, blue baby. 

“What is that!?”  
“This is Stitch. He’s far from home as well, so I thought I’d try to help him”, Rose explains simply.   
“He’s blue...”, Jackie says under her breath.   
“Yup!” Rose confirms.   
Jackie crosses her arms over her chest.   
“You can’t be serious about this! And how did you even get him out of Torchwood? Cause I assume that’s where he’s from. Oh my god Rose, you could get fired for this! Fired! What do you think your dad’s going to say?”  
Rose clears her throat.  
“Actually, mum, he let me do it.”  
“What… Why would he do that?”  
“Because, unlike you, he actually understands I just want to help!”   
“Rose-”

But Rose isn’t listening to any of that. She’s already running up the stairs. 

 

Kicking her bedroom door shut behind her, Rose puts Stitch down in the middle of her bed. He quickly gets back up on all fours, almost growling as he starts to climb up the wall like an insect. Not that it should be a suprise to anyone: he is an alien. 

“Alright, go ahead and sulk! Fine by me!”  
Stitch has now reached the ceiling, and is hanging upside down. He looks down at her. Rose more or less collapses onto her bed, sighing.   
“I’m stuck here too, yeah? Just like you. I thought I was gonna help you, but go ahead and growl all you like! I really don’t mind!”

Stitch somehow unsticks his claws from the ceiling, landing on the floor with a soft thump. Rose watches him as he crawls over to the bed, jumps up beside her… 

...and runs his tongue all over her face. 

“Stitch, no! Stop!”  
Rose manages to push him off her. She sits up, wiping away the trail of alien saliva from her cheek.   
“You can’t just go around and lick people’s faces whenever you feel like it!” she snaps.   
Stitch curls into a little ball at the end of the bed, whimpering. His ears are hanging down, instead of standing upright like usually. And he looks...sad. 

“Stitch… Hey, I’m sorry.”  
Rose reaches out a gentle hand towards him, but he jumps off the bed with a growl.   
“Of course”, Rose tells herself under her breath, laying back down. 

 

Rose can tell when her younger brother gets home from school. Partly because she can hear the front door opening and closing, and partly because he dashes into her room a few minutes later. Uninvited, like most of the times. This time he doesn’t grab her stuff or do something annoying, though. The little boy stops dead in his tracks, his eyes going wide. 

“Cool! Is that an alien?”  
“I’ll tell you what it is: it’s none of your business.”  
But Tony is already approaching Stitch, Stitch slowly backing away from this new human. Rose is trying to work out which of them she’s going to grab first in case there’s a fight. 

“Tony, carefully. He isn’t used to humans yet”, she warns.   
Stitch seems to relax a little. He stares at Tony’s hand, which is coming closer and closer to his face. Then he decides the hand have gotten too close, growling. Tony flinches, but the slightly awed look remains on his face.   
“He’s awesome!” he exclaims.   
“Alright, now out! You’ve got your own room!”

 

“How could you? We don’t even know what that thing is! No one does! And you just assume that Rose is capable of taking care of it!”  
“No Jacks, I’m trusting her to take care of it. And you should too.”  
“Why?”  
“Couse… Look: I haven’t known Rose for very long, but I do know that once she’s set her mind to something, she’s going to do it.”  
“And that includes taking an unknown creature into her home!?”  
“Jackie, please… We just gotta trust her.”  
“I guess so. She’s been so sad ever since… Ever since him. If this is something that’ll make her happy, I think we should let her have it.”


	3. Chapter 3

The next day, Rose has to go to work. She did consider bringing Stitch with her, but only for a short moment. He’s not so comfortable around humans, so how’s he going to react around humans with weapons and alien tech? Not good, that’s for sure. 

“Alright, I’m going off to work now. You behave yourself, okay?”   
Stitch gives a small nod. Or, at least Rose wants it to be a nod. She grabs her bag, giving her parents a quick hug each before she’s out the front door. 

 

“How are things going with your new pet?”  
“Wow, the word spreads fast around here. And he’s alright. Still a bit unsure, but I think that’s normal. This is a completely new planet for him, you know.”   
Jake smiles, nodding.   
“You’re brave”, he says with a little laugh.   
“How come?” Rose asks, suprised.   
“Well, you took an unknown alien into your home! How’s your family taking it, anyway??”  
“My mum’s kind of freaking out, but Tony thinks it’s the best thing ever.”  
“I can imagine.”

Rose smiles, going back to analyzing the readings on the screen. 

 

Rose doesn’t know what she expected when she opened the door and stepped into the mansion. She didn’t expect this, though: one of the housekeepers sweeping up glass shreds from the floor, Jackie standing in the middle of the mess, muttering curses under her breath. 

“What happened here?” Rose asks, dropping her bag on the hallway floor.   
“Your bloody alien is what happened here!”  
“Stitch?”  
“I think he was bored, and then he just decided to start running around like… Like a dog with it’s tail on fire!”  
“Where is he now?”  
“When I finally managed to catch him I locked him in your room. Though, I should have picked the closet.”

Rose sighs, throwing off her jacket and running upstairs. She unlocks her bedroom door, cracking it open.   
“Stitch?”  
Stitch is sitting on the floor. Scattered on the floor all around him are photographs. Photographs that fell out of that box that’s laying on its side in the bookshelf. 

Rose swings the door open, bursting into the room. The tears are very close to falling.   
“What have you done!? Get out! Out!”  
Stitch let’s out a sad noise and runs out the room. She kneels on the floor, gathering all the photographs into one pile. They are all of the Doctor, every single photo. She’s in a few of them, but he’s always there. Smiling back at her in a forever frozen moment. 

Taking a deep breath, Rose feels the tears starting to fall. She especially put them all away in that box so she wouldn’t have to look at them. Looking at them only brings back memories she’d rather just forget. 

She’s sobbing now, her breath coming out in short wheezes. She’s wrapped her arms around her knees and presses her forehead against her legs. 

This was all a bad idea, this was all a bad idea, this was all a bad idea… 

There’s a sound of tiny footsteps right outside her door. Rose is just about to yell at her brother to leave her the hell alone, but it isn’t Tony. It’s Stitch. He’s holding a box in his mouth, a box which he offers to Rose. She takes it, reading the label. 

“Chocolate?”  
“Chollate!” Stitch agrees excitedly, trying but failing to repeat the word Rose just said.   
“You can talk!”  
“Chollate!” is his only response as he points his paw at the box.   
Despite the tears that’s still falling, Rose finds the energy to smile. She opens the box. 

“Stitch, where did you find this?”  
No reply.   
“Was it downstairs? On the table?”  
The small alien nods.   
“This is my mum’s, the one she bought the other day. You can’t just take other people’s thin- No, Stitch!”

Rose watches in amused mixed horror as Stitch takes one of the chocolate pieces and puts it in his mouth, like he’s trying to prove a point. Or set an example.   
“Chollate. Eat.”  
Rose sighs.   
“I just told you that was my mum’s and you just ate it! You can’t do that! I don’t believe this...”  
Holding up a paw as if telling her to wait, Stitch starts coughing. Hard. A few seconds later, a salive-drowned chocolate piece falls from his mouth. Rose winces. 

“Eww, no!”  
Stitch seems honetly confused.  
“There’s no way she’s gonna want it now!”  
Still no reaction. Rose groans. 

“You know what? She can buy some more, she’s got a lot of money.”

And that’s what they do, the girl and her alien: sharing a box of chocolate on the floor.


	4. Chapter 4

“Alright, can you say Rose?”  
“Wose!”  
“No, no… say R. Can you say R?”  
“Rrrrr”  
It does sound more like a growl than the actual letter, but they are going somewhere. 

Rose is sitting cross-legged on her bedroom floor, Stitch in front of her. He seems pretty happy to learn, his ears pointing straight up in curiosity and his eyes big and interested. He’s really smart: they’ve only been sitting there for a few minutes, and he’s already learned to say a bunch of words. Short and easy words, but still. 

Then, to get Rose’s attention, Stitch poked her arm while attempting to say her name. This made Rose really happy, and it’s obvious Stitch wants to get it right.

Stitch licks his nose, sniffing something Rose can’t see on the floor. Rose sighs. His attention span really isn’t that wide.   
“Stitch? C’mon, you’re doing good!“  
Stitch looks back up at her, tilting his head to one side. 

“Rose?” he tries softly, moving his tongue around in his mouth like he’s tasting the sounds.   
“Yes! Yes, that’s it!” Rose exclaims, a bit more excited than she thinks she should be.  
There’s something about how her name sounds in Stitch’s small - and pretty adorable - voice. 

 

Over the next few days, Rose tells Stitch stories about the Doctor. He listens with his eyes full of dreams and fascination. She tells him about their travels, their adventures and all the in-between-bits. 

She tells him about the day they met, the day the Doctor saved her from those shop window dummies who wanted to murder her. 

She tells him about all the people the two of them saved, and about a few of the ones they couldn’t save. She tells him how the Doctor made her feel like the most important woman ever. 

 

There’s a hammock in the garden behind the Tyler mansion. Rose soon discovered it was the perfect place to just think. Probably because the garden’s so quiet late at night. She used to sneak out there when she couldn’t sleep, just to lay and look at the stars. She remembers how she used to close her eyes and just imagine the TARDIS flying by in the sky above. Of course, he was never there when she opened her eyes. 

She’s in that hammock again, but this time she’s not alone. Stitch is with her, sitting by her feet and looking down at the ground below, like he’s unsure what to do about the situation of being above ground. Rose is gently stroking the fur on his back, one of her legs hanging out so she can push the hammock back and forth.

“...then my fingers slipped, and I fell. That should’ve been the end for me, but Pete caught me and teleported me into this universe. I did see the Doctor again, on a beach a few weeks later. I thought he was coming to get me, but it was just a hologram. A projection he made from the TARDIS. It was only a last goodbye, nothing more.”

Rose doesn’t want to cry, but she’s not really got a choice. She sniffs softly, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.   
“Sorry”, she apologizes.   
Stitch looks up at her with his big eyes.   
“Doctor gone?”  
Rose nods, swallowing down a sob.   
“Yeah, he’s gone. There’s just me, now. But don’t worry, I’ll manage. I’ve got my family, which is a big plus. Still… I miss him. Like hell, actually.”

Stitch crawls across the hammock, laying down across Rose’s chest. He’s a bit heavy, but it’s not too bad. Rose finds herself stroking his ears. It’s really relaxing, honestly. She’s read about therapy dogs used to help people cope with trauma or stress, but therapy aliens…? Well, there’s a first for everything. 

Apparently, Stitch has decided to take a nap right there. Yawning. he curls into a ball of blue fluff, closing his eyes. Rose smiles, her fingers still playing with the tip of his ear. She tries to roll over to her side, but finds it’s not possible when someone’s claimed your chest as their bed. The only thing she really can do is close her eyes, letting sleep take over her. And, for once, there’s no nightmares of cold beaches or white walls. 

 

That’s when the stars start going out.


	5. Chapter 5

They don’t notice anything at first, of course. It’s not like anyone has memorized the location of every star in the sky to the point where they can tell if one is missing. 

Rather than someone noticing the stars are disappearing, one of Torchwood’s surveillance satellites picked up changes and sent out an alarm. The one receiving the alarm is no other than Pete Tyler. 

Jackie made sure to ban all kind of electronic devices during family dinner time, but when the Torchwood boss gets a phone call in the middle of the day, you kind of get a feeling that something’s wrong. 

Pete excuses himself from the table, and Rose can’t help but pause her conversation to listen. It’s most likely about work, and then it probably concerns her as well. She can’t hear the other end of the conversation, but judging by Pete’s reaction it’s something pretty serious. She finds herself rising from her chair, walking over to him out in the hallway. 

“What is it?” she asks once the phone call has ended.   
“Nothing that concerns you”, he tells her.   
He’s probably just trying to protect her, Rose thinks for herself. Just like her mum would. Not that it suprises her, honestly. 

 

At work the next day, it doesn’t take long for Rose to figure out that something’s wrong. Apparently Pete has gathered the agents with highest ranking for some kind of “emergency meeting”. Trying not to be offended (as the boss’ daughter she expected to at least hear about these things), Rose peers into the conference room. She can’t see her dad from the angle the doorway’s in, but she hears his voice.   
“...have to do something. We don’t know when it started, at what rate the stars are disappearing or even what we are going to do about it. We’ve tried tracking the source, but it didn’t give any result that makes sense. I’ve got a plan, but I can’t promise it’s going to work. And I can’t promise it’s safe. I can’t even promise it’s going to work. Still, if it’s someone who can help us, it is the Doctor.”

From her current position, peeking out from the other side of the door, Rose can see some of the agent’s faces. They look confused.   
“But, isn’t that just a story?” someone in the back asks, raising their hand.   
Pete clears his throat.   
“Actually, no. The Doctor exists, just not here. The Doctor you’ve all heard of, the one Rose has been talking about, is from her original universe. They used to travel together, as some of you might know. For those of you who doesn’t know: the Doctor is an alien, and he’s got a sort of time machine. His knowledge of the universe and all the stars goes further than any of you could probably learn in one lifetime. We m-”

He never finishes that sentence. Rose dashes into the conference room, screaming at the top of her lungs:  
“I’ll do it! I’ll find him!”

 

“Rose, love, I understand that you miss him a lot, but I can’t possibly let you-”  
“Why not? Cause it’s going to be dangerous? You know what? Crossing dimensions is gonna be dangerous no matter who does it!”  
Swinging the mansion front door open in anger, Rose storms inside. She doesn’t even bother to remove her shoes as she heads up to her bedroom. Pete is calling something after her, but she can’t hear what. Not that she cares to know. 

Stitch is asleep, right in the middle of her bed. The little alien’s really been busy while she was at work: he’s used up all of the colorful building blocks she gave him, as well as a few books, to build a miniature town on the floor. Rose slowly closes the bedroom door behind her, taking a moment to admire the creation. It seems like Stitch put a lot of thought and time into planning it, since every single one of the plastic shapes seems to be in a place that was specifically made for that piece. 

Stitch stirs on the bed, making a snoring-like noise as he blinks his big eyes open. He notices Rose’s presence right away, and he also seems to notice that she’s sad. He sits up, looking at her like he’s trying to figure out if he did something wrong. Finally he looks at the building-block-town, whimpering. Realizing he thinks that’s the problem, Rose is quick to explain the situation. 

“No no, the building is very pretty! It’s just something that happened at work. Basically, my dad wants to send someone to the other universe to find the Doctor, so he can help us. But, he won’t let me be the one to do it. He wasn’t even sure if it was possible. I might be giving myself false hope, you know.”  
Stitch tilts his head to the side, like he’s listening really closely and really trying to understand.   
“How?” he asks finally.   
“It’s funny, but I don’t even know that. I heard dad say something about a machine, though. Some kind of cannon, which would be used to literally throw a person into another universe. Sounds horrible, I know. But, maybe it is. Maybe this entire thing is just a bad idea. Maybe I should just stay here and go back to working in a shop and-”

Something sharp touches the bare skin of her hand, and Rose flinches. It’s a piece of a paper. She takes it from Stitch’s paw, studying the drawing. She can’t really make sense of it, but she can tell it’s numbers and lines and a circle. It’s nothing she’s ever going to understand, not with being this bad at maths. Still, if she showed this to someone in the lab…

She’s got no idea what it is, but she’s got a feeling it might help her.


End file.
